Verner’s March 29 visit was the last event tied to a yearlong effort by FCLC deans to enhance student’s first-year student experience through a cohesive theme of magic threaded through programming and academics.

“The actual theme that has emerged is probably one we would have never expected—and that’s a good thing,” said Professor Fred Wertz, Ph.D., acting FCLC dean.

The year began with all first-year students reading Lev Grossman’s The Magicians. The novel, which has inspired an ongoing television series on the SyFy network, didn’t necessarily land well with students due to concerns about diversity and gender portrayals in the book. This prompted Grossman to deliver a pointed lecture titled, “I Did It Wrong,” which not only addressed student criticism, but also examined mistakes he made during his career.

“I didn’t think the students would have criticized The Magicians, and we sure didn’t think [Grossman] would talk about it,” said Wertz. “He said ‘I’ve been doing things wrong all my life, but you learn from your mistakes and that’s life.’”

Wertz said that there were many other magical surprises over the course of the year, including when a hypnotist veered from traditional notions of what hypnotists might make people do, such act silly, but instead suggested to them, under hypnosis, that “they believe in themselves and the core of their being.”

Held just after a series of magic workshops for students, Verner’s talk too, held several surprises. Magic was at the core of the talk, but his examples of magic’s potential were mired in the very real horrors of war and violence. Having been a professor of psychology for more than two decades at Burlington College in Vermont, Verner stumbled onto the unexpected power of magic while visiting refugee camps in Kosovo during the civil war there.

Together with his wife Janet Fredericks, he was guided through the camps by a 6-year-old called Fatima to perform magic for the refugees. They met war-weary men and old women, all of whom knew Fatima. She would get them water, assistance, and a table if need be, which is not an easy thing to find in a refugee camp, said Verner.

When they came to a town “swollen with refugees,” they set up a table and within a few minutes, 350 people stood before them waiting for the show to begin. Magic commenced, and when the show was finished a skeptical old woman approached. She had seen Verner multiply flowers from a single stem. She asked him to do the same with a coin. Which he did. She asked him to do it again and he did. She stood back in belief, not disbelief. She then asked him to produce what she really wanted.

“Make us visas to America,” she said; “I can’t do that trick,” he responded.

On leaving the camps, Verner turned to say goodbye to Fatima, but she wasn’t there. She was hiding in the back of his car. She wanted to go to America with Janet and him. It wasn’t until he returned to his hotel did he realize that throughout the day no one spoke English and he didn’t speak Roma. The day had played out with magic being the common tongue. Soon after, he formed Magicians Without Borders. Many shows followed, in Afghan refugee camps, in Somali camps, and in the poor towns of El Salvador where children walked past decapitated bodies and the results of horrific gang violence.

“They all understood magic, that magic was this universal language, and then I realized another thing, no matter who we performed for, when they saw magic they thought, ‘Maybe we can go to America and realize our hopes and dreams,’” he said.

He recalled another refugee fleeing the Eastern European pogroms that had threated the lives of so many European Jews. The refugee moved to Wisconsin as Erik Weisz, a name he later changed to Harry Houdini.

“Houdini once said, ‘When I perform my magic in poor difficult situations, my magic not only amuses but can awaken hope that the impossible is possible,” Verner said, quoting the master.

It’s a realization that Verner decided to build upon by forming his nonprofit of a dozen activist magicians. Magicians Without Borders has since gone on to perform for more than 7 million refugees and orphan children, he said. They hold workshops, like the one held with Fordham students, teaching the children how to do their own magic tricks. In most of the camps, it was the first time that many had seen an entertainer.

“A south Sudanese elder told me, ‘We laugh a lot among ourselves in our huts, but for the first time in 15 years we laughed together as a community,’” recalled Verner. “These isolated people come together for wonder.”

Eventually, the stated mission for the growing group became: “Entertain, Educate, and Empower.”

By teaching, as well as performing, they left behind a bit of magic with young people who could, in turn, teach others in the camps. Some have gone on to professional lives financed through their skills.

On Friday night, after the lecture, a few of Verner’s protégés from the Yale Society of Magic mingled with the newly minted magicians who had attended the workshop from the night before. There was talk of collaboration for one of Fordham’s Global Outreach programs.

Global Outreach (GO!) was involved in planning from the start of the year, as was Student Affairs and Mission Integration and Planning. For Verner, a former professor, it was a delight to see the many departments come together to make magic.

“I was in academia for 40 years,” he later wrote in an email to Fordham News “What a joy and inspiring delight to be with a group of University folks who are deeply driven and inspired by a vision and seem to have vocations and not jobs. Everyone involved had intelligent, creative, inspiring, funny, delightful things to say. I feel honored to be associated with the Fordham family.”

For Wertz, the year’s events have the potential to spark a Lincoln Center tradition of incorporating a theme into the first-year experience.

“To have each of these scenarios take place, who knows what’s going to emerge in the years to come!” he said.

Next year’s theme? Food.

“None of this is new,” said Grossman, current holder of Fordham’s Mary Higgins Clark Chair in Creative Writing. “Shakespeare trafficked in all manner of ghosts, so did Dante and Milton, they were all fantasists dealing in emotional reality.”

The book is the cornerstone for Fordham College at Lincoln Center’s Year of Magic, a series of events for first-year students that look at magic through a variety of academic disciplines. The novel has also inspired an ongoing SyFy network television series, which examines the practice of magic in the real world.

Grossman said that the creators of the television show—which examines the practice of magic in the real world—often consult with him on the script, but they have indeed “made it their own.” He said that many of the book’s characters and settings remain the same, though the storyline often veers in directions distinct from the book.

“Stories on screen are shaped very different from books, they have looping plots, and those loops have to fit together for the season and to make seasonal arcs,” he said.

“In TV, the plot surfaces, but in novels you can move back and forward in time and space,” he said. “There’s no one more powerful than a narrator of a novel; it’s absolutely the most magical thing there is.”

On the subject of magic, he said that he was, like most young people, attracted to fantasy from an early age.

“It’s really the lingua franca for kids, but I didn’t write about until I was in my mid-thirties,” he said. “By the mid-aughts, it had become so central to our culture, with Lord of the Rings, Twilight, and Harry Potter.”

He said that he read fantasy “compulsively.” In his book, he describes characters who do magic compulsively, even addictively—like a drug. They live secret lives in shambled homes akin to crack houses. But that’s not to say fantasy is about escapism, he said. It’s about facing the truth.

“Fantasy is a way at getting at real issues,” he said.

In his Mary Higgins Clark Chair in Creative Writing Lecture on Oct. 15, Grossman said he’ll explore a variety of themes, from magic to the professional lives of writers and even changes that have occurred since he wrote the book in 2009. Several students have already commented on the lack of diversity in the novel and issues related to gender portrayal.

“I hope students will feel comfortable bringing that up personally at the Q&A at the lecture,” he said.

Because everyone seems to have an option on writing these days, literary critics have had to find a new role, Grossman said, particularly at time when Amazon reviews usurp traditional book criticism.

“Literary criticism has become about how to read and less about thumbs up or thumbs down,” he said. “Today’s critics look at ways of analyzing texts and ways of being aware when reading text, which makes reading more exciting.”

He said that the times also demand different entrées into books. At the lecture, he’ll also discuss particular tools in writing, such as how to write a catchy opening.

“When you’re writing nowadays, you have to remember that people buy based on an excerpt or from the first page,” he said. “We don’t have the luxury of a slow burn, it helps to hook and grab. I like to focus on these little moments.”

He said that the title of his lecture, “I Did It Wrong,” hints at the hard-knocks path of getting published, adding that he had no meaningful success until he was 40. Preparing for the lecture made him think about how long it took for him to feel like he was having any success as a creative person.

“There isn’t any right way to do this and everybody thinks they do it wrong, so I want them to understand what’s ahead,” he said. “My lecture will be much more personal; I want to talk about the experience of trying to be a creative person in the world and the kinds of compromises and challenges and you have to deal with.”

Writing can be a very lonely business, he said, and rejection doesn’t help. The reality is that the feeling of personal rejection is part of the business.

“The world will try to convince you that you are not a creative person and the trick is to make sure it doesn’t succeed.”